Posters to benefit from proof-of-posting plans

The outdoor advertising industry is boosting the accountability of posters as a medium with two companies launching schemes that offer “real-time” information that will confirm when campaigns are put up.

Media owners Clear Channel and JC Decaux are launching live proof-of-posting systems now and will be rolling them out nationally over the next year. Clear Channel has developed the Wireless Activity Verification (WAV) system over the past 18 months. It will use Nokia N70 mobile phones and will enable operators to scan barcode labels on posters to confirm proof of posting.

Clear Channel operations director Mark Webb says staff will scan barcodes using the mobile phone camera and report damage to posters with photographs. All reports will be sent back to the company’s IT managements system OASIS so advertisers have access to up-to-the-minute information.

Clear Channel is testing the system on 50,000 of its Adshel panels and will expand it to billboards next January. The scheme will be adopted on all of the company’s panels in the UK by March 2008.

Meanwhile, rival JC Decaux’s Live! proof of posting scheme also claims to offer improved accountability. Its bill posting staff will take photographs of campaigns using PDAs when they are put up and send the images to the outdoor company’s web portal.

JC Decaux marketing director David McEvoy says JC Decaux Live! will provide “absolute accountability” of when, where and how campaigns are posted.

The service will initially be launched on the organisation’s Premiere sites in December and extended to all its large format and six-sheets next year.

Clear Channel Outdoor manages 973,000 sites in more than 60 countries. JC Decaux operates in 3,500 cities and